Election Results

[TCBF]

Hey!  It works!  "Take your Army.ca Quoting Test ONLINE with 48Highlander!"

;D

Tom

 

[Glorified Ape]

I'm about as happy with the election results as I can be - the Libs needed a smack in the face and this will suffice, methinks. I like some of the Conservative platform but I'm glad they got a minority.

I was thrilled with the results, I believe that this is just a stepping stone to a conservative majority government. The East has a tendency to view anything out of the West as something which is bent on destroying Eastern ideal and throwing the country into a tailspin. Harper certainly has a few Western ideals that may not sit well in the East (ex: senate reform, tax and social reform), but by an large he is not going to be doing anything which could be considered earth shattering. I see the conservatives forming a responsible, centrist government, which will win over many of the doubters in the East. Just as happened in Diefenbakers government, and next election we will have a majority conservative government, it will take something big on the conservative end for them to lose terribly in the next election.

Oh give the anti-Eastern crap a break. I swear to god, the only people that can whine worse than Quebec are anti-East Westerners. Here's a newsflash: many evil Easterners couldn't give two sh_ts about the West, let alone "doubt" it, get paranoid over it, or generally pay it much more attention than we do anything else. Conservatives aren't popular in the East because conservatism isn't particularly popular in the East. Don't flatter yourselves by assuming we care enough about you to change our voting habits solely to oppose you. That seems a more popular theme in your neck of the woods - somewhat akin to the petulant teenage girl dating an a**hole just to piss her dad off. Christ, you have a Torontonian as your "Western Saviour" - irony? "The West is in"... indeed, with a Torontonian at the helm... how apropos.

As an Ontarian, I've experienced a big C, "common sense" conservative government and I wasn't particularly pleased with the way it stripped and raped the province. Common sense, my sweet white arse - my province is still suffering from the damage wrung by that idiot Harris. Am I saying that Harper is Mike Harris? No, absolutely not, but I can understand and sympathize with why people in Ontario might be a little suspect of conservatism.

 

[RangerRay]

What do you mean? I don't see the problem with medicare. Could someone please explain this to me?

Caesar and TCBF summed it up pretty good.  Right now, health care accounts for almost 50% of provincial budgets.  Add to that the crappy service and long wait lists, it's a system that is ripe for collapse.  And it won't be saved by throwing more money at it.

We should be looking to Europe for health delivery models.  There, they have mixed public/private systems where patients come first.  In places like France, Germany and Holland, people get access healthcare regardless of wealth.  Quite often, the public system pays for private treatment.  And you know what?  They have lower healthcare costs, but better outcomes than we do here.  Part of the problem with us is that we are held hostage a greedy public sector union monopoly that doesn't want it's turf muscled in on.

The US system isn't as evil as eveyone makes it out to be.  Here in BC, I pay more for Medical Service Premiums than I would for private health insurance in the US.  And I could get my knee operated on right away.  Here, I won't get put on a surgery wait list until I crawl into my doctor's office and I'm pumped full of pain killers to "manage" the pain!

When travelling overseas, I've met many Yanks, and they always tell me how jealous they are that we have "free" health care.  Then I tell them "Yeah, but people die on wait lists for treatment or surgery".  They say "Wait lists?  What are those?"